a song for love in the new year

songs with women's names
the number 14
the light of the moon, near full
I avoid it!
 I don't avoid it
I avoid the urge to
my ring slipping round my finger,
  maria        laura        marlene

a train   choos

   10:53 pm, tomorrow
(this time of year, the nights fall longer)
so let your beard grow round your neck
and your torso
and past your new boots
and down my throat

make me toast

        read your fortune!
        little new-year son

I always have liked
the german pronunciation
for marlene

the soft lilt,
the forgiving!
                         (do you remember proclaiming
                           that you'd never love someone
                           that you'd never love someone explaining
                           that you'd never truly love someone
                              who's never caught exclaiming)

  oh, me!


       hello, little new-year babe
        hellow, last smoke of smokes
       hello, pretty whistle
     of pretty, nearby train
        hello, sleeping city-that-won't
                                        the oh-she-won't-quit place

                               dreamy babe,
                              I've never said this to anything
                            I've never been that guy
                              But I wanna die in You

      and, therefore
    thereby

    tinkle
         tinkle
               tinkle
                      little bell, ring
                                           ring
                                               ring in me
whistle past our bedscapes

impulse $$$

it was a sad summer

their names were vermilion beard, sad mouth

it was a sad fall

their names were aubergine hair, squishface, eyelashes

it was a sad winter 

their names were eyes

it was a sad spring

their names were hipbones, limbs, flesh

a bag of lemons is a bad sign is a bad notion idea indication

"if someone takes your idea it isn't really yours"-  go to work

"if I am the only one alive I am all of the life"-  go write in your diary

do you remember when we ate mushrooms

and that kanye song, all of the lights 

showed up

and I fell into your sob shoulder

and you asked me to tell you why 

and I said, it just reminds me that everything is as bad as it seems

did you know that kim kardashian has ballooned to 220 lbs since getting pregnant?

that she has ballooned to such proportions that kanye will no longer speak to her?

I read this off a magazine at kmart two weeks ago

when Nickey & I were buying toilet paper

and she desperately wanted a pop tart

so we were looking among the magazine racks for impulse buys

we thought pop tarts would make a pretty good one of those

29

it's official

summer is here

I baptized everything

at do-it-yourself doggy detail

the proprietor is a giant man with dredlocked dogs of all sizes

he said, When you shave a dog like this, 

and we look suspiciously at the collie,

You have to go at it like you're scraping ice off a windshield

it's official

because Nickey made us a birthday salad

like she made last year, when I turned 28 

& discovered bulleitt bourbon

Everyone cries on their birthday

& I was in love again or still with someone I'd loved 5 years before

and I left the bar alone

so the bar could be alone

so I could be alone with my middle-aged present 

& my maudlin I-miss-you past

we drank the bourbon with salad sap,

rhubarb syrup

we took it to the river with us, 

and a shorn collie

and our beached chairs

and I climbed into the river, under the water

and while I was inside her for those seconds

the hard seconds, my being very much aware of how

soft & warm

my innards are

how they're encased in a thousand knives stabbing you all at once

not to beconstatly reaching for titanic quotations, but

it was a bliss

a true moment where I wasn't terrified

because I am 

soft & warm

at least inside, still.

and I surfaced, gasping, mouth gulping sun

my wet seal hair long down my back

the droplets on anxious tired flesh

trying, breaking, popping 

in the light.

When I'm 29 I will police my emotions

I will make arrests

I will cuff me

I will throw me in the back

I will read me my hurried rights

I will put my heart on a leash

in a chokechain

& demand it next to me

legless, dragging along

taught tether,

slack tether.

that water was life-affirmer

my river hair, passion-confirmer

vehement future-asserter

(The other day she asked, how do you pronounce that word, vehemence, and we said it aloud a couple of times

I don't know that I do anything with vehemence, I said, and there followed the scoff of the century.)

When I'm 29 I will write down the names of everyone I've been in love with

and the list will crush the planet

the names will fall into trenches

into little graves

with headstones in ornate decay

How many people have you been in love with

Are you in love with anyone, now?

I used to ask two questions

when I was falling in love with someone, I'd say

Are you in love?

and

Are you an alcoholic?

It used to be that I'd turn away when the answers were yes

which they often were

but mostly I'd stay. Else how would I keep it all so relevantly destructive?

There are new questions to ask

like,

Do you love

or

Can you?

How many people have you been in love with

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 9

or

1,2,34

or never say forever, and never forvember me 

nevember me forever

modern underparted

And the sweet ones, all having names. I like the looks about, through a slotted glass a peach or salmon through the pines, the last of the fleshy sponge day. A true summer one. My own little sweet fleshy peach one with the dewy down sits in sitz, I'm with the water rush through pipe in ears, adjacently by rooms. The too many pungent flowers behind, still awaft though twilight somehow nonexists tonight. I like this luscious spring, the hot of sun fingers still presst against the uppers of arms and backs. All brown and ripe like insides of fruit themse.ves